TYPE FILE · 7 CRYPTIDs
Phantom Big Cats
Black panthers and out-of-place big cats seen where none should live.
BIG CAT · 1978
Beast of Bodmin Moor
Bodmin Moor, Cornwall
A big black cat said to stalk Cornwall’s Bodmin Moor, investigated by the government in 1995 – days before a leopard skull turned up in a river.
WIDELY REPORTED
BIG CAT · 1871
Queensland tiger
Rainforests and tablelands of far north Queensland
A striped, tree-climbing “marsupial cat” of north Queensland’s rainforests, reported since 1871 and linked by some to the extinct marsupial lion.
REGIONAL LEGEND
BIG CAT · 1933
Gippsland phantom cat
Gippsland, eastern Victoria
Puma- or panther-sized cats reported across Gippsland since the 1930s, blamed on wartime mascots – yet every one examined so far has been a feral moggy.
REGIONAL LEGEND
BIG CAT · 1953
Beast of Bladenboro
Bladenboro, Bladen County, North Carolina
A cat-like killer blamed for a string of dog deaths around Bladenboro, North Carolina, in winter 1953–54, which drew armed crowds of up to 1,000 hunters.
LOCAL LEGEND
BIG CAT · 1970s
Beast of Exmoor
Exmoor, on the Devon–Somerset border
A phantom sheep-killer blamed on a puma or panther; in 1983 Royal Marine snipers were sent onto Exmoor to hunt it – and found nothing at all.
WIDELY REPORTED BIG CAT · 1939Glawackus
Glastonbury, Connecticut
A screaming, part-panther, part-bear beast blamed for missing livestock around Glastonbury, Connecticut, in a 1939 newspaper-fueled panic.
LOCAL LEGEND BIG CAT · 1937Mngwa
Coastal forest near Lindi and Mchinga, southern Tanzania
A donkey-sized, tabby-striped man-eating cat of Tanzania’s southern coast, blamed for killings in colonial-era Lindi but never identified.
REGIONAL LEGEND